Devalok
Temple legend · 1 telling · West India

Ghushma's hundred and one lingas

Who is in it

Places: Grishneshwar

The story, beat by beat

  1. The brahmin Sudharma and his wife Sudeha have no child.
  2. Sudeha makes her husband marry her younger sister Ghushma.
  3. Ghushma shapes a hundred and one clay lingas every day and sinks them in the pond after worship.
  4. She bears a son, and Sudeha's jealousy grows as the boy grows.
  5. One night Sudeha kills the sleeping boy and throws his body in the pond.
  6. Ghushma finds the bed empty and goes on with her worship as always.
  7. The boy walks out of the pond alive; Shiva appears and offers to punish Sudeha.
  8. Ghushma asks him to forgive her sister and to stay at the place for ever.

devotion jealousy murder resurrection forgiveness

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Temple tradition

Grishneshwar temple tradition (Padma Purana per Wikipedia)

West India · Verul (Ellora), Maharashtra Shaiva

A brahmin named Sudharma lived near the Devagiri hill with his wife Sudeha, and they had no children. It was Sudeha who pressed him to marry her younger sister Ghushma, and it was Ghushma who bore the son. Ghushma's whole life was a rite: every day she moulded a hundred and one lingas of clay, worshipped them, and lowered them into the pond. Her sister watched the boy grow and the household's love shift, and one night she killed him in his sleep and dropped his body into the same pond. In the morning the household was in uproar. Ghushma shaped her lingas as usual, worshipped and went to the water to sink them, and the boy came up out of the pond and walked to her. Shiva stood there and offered to deal with Sudeha. Ghushma asked instead that her sister be forgiven, and that the Lord stay. He is there as Grishneshwar, the jyotirlinga beside the Ellora caves, in a temple rebuilt by Maloji Bhosale and by Ahilyabai's kinswoman Gautama Bai Holkar.

Grishneshwar Temple — Wikipedia

Sources: Grishneshwar Temple — Wikipedia

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